


Anonymous

by Cyn



Series: KB Fics [2]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Anonymity, Anonymous Sex, Clubbing, F/M, Immortality, Implied Relationships, M/M, Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-06
Updated: 2012-08-06
Packaged: 2017-11-11 14:16:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/479400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cyn/pseuds/Cyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Merlin knows what he looks like, each night at the club. What he doesn't know is what his partner sees.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anonymous

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the "anonymity" square on my kink_bingo card. 
> 
> Warnings: Anonymous sex, magic use, intoxication, light bondage, sex toys, pegging (all brief, non-explicit), immortality & implied character deaths.

He doesn't know what he looks like, each night at the club. Oh, Merlin knows what he is wearing, because it's the same thing he wears every night he goes out: jeans, black and form-fitting, a plain shirt in a solid color. And he knows what his reflection looks like in the mirror: messy black hair, blue eyes, pale skin, high cheekbones, an earring glittering in one ear, long neck with a prominent adam's apple, supple limbs. 

The problem isn't him; he knows. What he doesn't know is what his partner sees. 

-

The hair is even better this time around, cared for with more styling products than Merlin can name, but the grin is the same, and the swagger, and the easy way they fall into each other. Gwaine palms his hips, pressed a kiss to his neck, and Merlin sinks.

"Lets go back to mine?" Gwaine asks. He's close and Merlin can feel the line of his cock, half-hard, press into his hip. It's a rule for Merlin to avoid the reincarnations of his old friends, because he doesn't want to know who they see in him, doesn't want to be the one to carry even more memories of these men. But Gwaine is hot and heavy against him, his voice lilting and so familiar, and Merlin has been alone for so long. "Not that I don't appreciate a crowd, some privacy would be nice."

Merlins answer is a kiss. 

-

In the morning, feather-light touches over his nose, lips, jaw, cheeks wake him before the sun does. Gwaine is staring down at him, a confused expression in his eyes, warring with the too-easy grin on his lips. 

"Somehow, you remind me of someone I used to know," Gwaine says, when he realizes Merlin is awake. The smile slips off his lips. "You're beautiful, you know."

Merlin kisses him before he can say anything else. The ghost of the question he is dying to ask lingers, even when Gwaine sees him to the door. There are no numbers exchanged. 

-

He breaks his self-imposed silence with Lance. It's little more than a month after Gwaine, when he sees Lance in the club, and he can't resist the pull. Usually, he never sees more than one of them in a given year and never in the same place. It's rare for him to see more than two in the same generation. But Lance is there, looking strangely out of place amid the throng of people, even though he moves with the beat perfectly, his smile charming everyone around him. It's his eyes, Merlin decides, that marks him as different, and that is the excuse he uses to pull Lance away. 

He doesn't want to admit his selfish desires.

"What do I look like to you?" Merlin asks, pulling away from Lance's dick, a trail of saliva following him. Lance is staring at him, wide-eyed and so impossible that it makes Merlin's heart skip a beat. For a moment, he wonders if Lance can even reply, because his lips are moving in a soundless gasp and it seems to take forever for the words to reach his ears. 

"So gorgeous, like this," Lance murmurs and threaded his fingers through Merlin's hair. That's not exactly what Merlin was asking but it soothes his heart more than he wants to admit, and he goes back to sucking. He'll pretend it's him Lance sees, and not someone who looks like Gwen, or perhaps Arthur, or whoever else Lance loves.

-

The clubs wear him out; Merlin only goes out Friday nights, because he needs the entire weekend to recover, find his energy. Or rather, it's the week that wears him out and the sexual release he gets Friday nights overwhelms him, plays havoc with his magic when he lets it run free. 

Immortality is a curse and not even for the reasons Merlin thought at first. Losing friends, watching everyone he loves die - that is hard, harder than anything Merlin can fathom. After so many years, he stopped getting attached, stopped caring about people. Stopped looking for his friends.

But the small things make immortality an annoying burden. For the first hundred years, he had to move every so often. When a person doesn't age, in a world where men didn't live far beyond forty, maybe fifty, rumors crop up. And with rumors come curses, until eventually a bad rainfall means a mob. So Merlin moved, until he let his magic work a miracle and started up the illusions. 

During the week, he works hard to project certain appearances, depending on where he is: an older gentleman, seeing to his business investments, a college student about town. A thousand years gave him the opportunity to make money, to forge identities and it has only become easier with time. And on Fridays, he lets it go, lets people see whatever they want when looking at him. It lets him take someone home, lose himself in the feel of a body against his and enjoy the simple pleasure of not having to hold back, revels in the feeling of being unknown, anonymous. 

No one ever sees him.

-

The number of women Merlin's fucked can be counted on one hand two hands. He likes women, but it's rare for him to take them home; he doesn't want children. It's easier to have sex with them now, with the ease of access to condoms and other forms of birth control, but it's been so long that Merlin tends to ignore women.

Until Morgana shows up. 

She's in a dress that actually covers her tits and her ass, unlike the majority of the women in the club, but she still outshines all of them. The green material clings to her body and when she stalks toward him, Merlin feels his mouth go dry. He has no chance of saying no to her, not when she curls a finger under his chin and her red lips curl around the words, more a demand than a question.

Merlin spends the night with his hands bound to her bed, Morgana rocking over him, and once, into him, with the strap-on she "kept just for times like these, when someone begs so prettily, just like you're doing now."

"Please," Merlin all but sobs into the pillow. It's not for the fake cock she rubs between his ass cheeks, but for a sign. 

She tangles her hands in his hair, tilts his head up as she fucks into him. "You have the prettiest blue eyes. I wonder what they would like with tears in them."

It could mean anything. Lots of people like blue eyes. Arthur had blue eyes. But it's something, the most Merlin has been given in hundreds of years. The force of his orgasm makes him nearly black out.

-

Given that he's seen Gwaine and Lance and Morgana - and caught sight of Elyan walking down the street, ran into Gwen in the supermarket - Merlin knows that he shouldn't be surprised. It's only fitting, for Arthur to be there. In the club, dressed for the office, nursing a whisky. He isn't dancing, isn't paying attention to any of the dozen people trying to get his attention. He's simply staring, Merlin realizes, at the door, at _him_. 

Arthur is too much. After so many years alone, never seen for who he is, never _known_ , seeing Arthur there, staring at him with hunger in his eyes, makes Merlin feel so intently alone that he can't do it.

It's the first week Merlin can recall not taking anyone home in at least fifty years.

-

Arthur is there the following week again. Merlin wants to run, flee the club - maybe find another place, because he can't go home alone again. He should have found somewhere else, in the first place. But he's a creature of habit, especially now. And he is so weak, especially against Arthur.

That keeps him in the club, although he turns away from Arthur and slips into the mass of dancing bodies on the floor. He'll find someone there and leave and forget about everything, indulge in anonymous sex where it doesn't matter who he is or isn't. Arthur isn't even there for him, so it will be easy.

Except the arm that slips around his waist is nicely muscled, dusted with golden hair where the shirt sleeves have been rolled up; the body that presses against his strong and shapely and familiar; and the voice that whispers into his ear something straight from his dreams. 

It doesn't even take a heartbeat for him to give in.

-

Merlin actually brings no one to his home. He has an apartment he uses for one-night stands, if the person isn't willing to go back to theirs, and he does actually spend a little time in the place. The neighbors know him as the just-out-of-college boy who works odd jobs to keep afloat. It's easy, and offers him a measure of protection, and Merlin knows the advantages of having a number of places to escape to. 

He doesn't take Arthur there, when he insists his place is a no-go. Instead, he brings Arthur to the house he really does live in, a gorgeous Tudor Revival that Merlin had finished with just a few touches to remind him of Camelot. It's been his home for over a hundred years. The street is quiet, few neighbors to bother him, and he can easily pass off being a new owner, or the son of the previous owner. His magic makes repairs easy; even installing bathtubs and indoor plumbing was easy. Other than the gardeners, the pool boy, and the housekeepers Merlin employs, no one ever sees it. He likes it that way. 

Arthur walks in like he owns the place and Merlin questions his rationale in letting Arthur into his private world. He'll never not see Arthur there, standing in the entrance, looking at him with that same hunger from earlier, from the week before.

"Gwaine was the first to mention you," Arthur tells him. He's shedding his jacket, his tie, his shoes. "Said he saw someone who reminded him of an old friend, someone we've been looking for. Claimed you for a beauty, but couldn't remember the details.

"And then there was Lance." Arthur stalks toward him, in bare feet and shirt half undone. Merlin watches him, unsure and unsteady, taking a step back for each of Arthur's, until there is nowhere left to go, his back against the wall. "Couldn't remember anything, he claimed, just how your lips looked around his dick. Couldn't even say it without blushing. Got a good laugh out of him for that one." 

Merlin wants to ask him why he's doing, why he's saying all of this, what any of it has to do with him. They hadn't been seeing him, because his magic shows people what they most desire. How could Arthur even trace it back to him? The words stick in his throat, and even when he opens his lips to croak out something, Arthur raises a finger to his lips. 

"Lance was meant to see if there was any relevance to Gwaine's words. Can't always trust Gwaine, you know," and he looks at Merlin as though Merlin _knows_ what he means, and Merlin's heart is racing. "Morgana wasn't supposed to happen, but she insisted." Arthur shrugs at that, just how he used to when Morgana insisted upon something and got her way. 

"She was the only one who could offer more than some hasty non-descriptions, but even she didn't have much. Your eyes, and the way you begged so nicely. But it all added up. I knew it was you." Arthur steps closer, closer, until he is an inch away, his hands resting on the wall beside Merlin's head. Escape is impossible, with the implacable heat of Arthur's body surrounding him. "You left last week."

"You - they saw something different-" It can be something else that Arthur means. It has to be, because why would Arthur be looking for Merlin? Why would any of them? An old friend doesn't mean anything; old to mortals means twenty years ago, not the thousand something Merlin thinks of as old. But he can't help but whisper the words, implicate himself and play right into Arthur's hands, especially when they are right there and he wants Arthur's hands on him, and fears them all the same. 

Triumph shines in Arthur's eyes, making Merlin remember the fact that he likes winning, likes being right - it's something he never grew out of, through his years of being king. His smile matches the gleam, although there is an edge to it that Merlin hesitates to name. 

"Saw something different, huh? Is it different each week? Or- No." Arthur pauses to study him again, making Merlin's toes curl at the intensity of the gaze. "Different with each person? That's why we could never find you, because no one ever saw you.

"All these years and you were right here," he whispers, something like disbelief and resignation coloring his tone. And then Arthur's hands are on him, clutching at his arms, hard enough to bruise. He pulls Merlin in that last inch and his lips are just as fierce as Merlin imagined they would be, hot and heady and demanding. It takes everything Merlin has to tear himself away from that kiss, and even when he pulls back, he wants nothing more than to give in and kiss Arthur again. But he can't, not yet, because it can still be someone else they are looking for. It will shatter him to pieces, but Merlin can't not know the truth, and his voice is both desperate and hopefully when he speaks. 

"Who do you-" he asks, at the same time that Arthur is snarling, with every ounce of annoyance he once felt tempered by knowledge and trust and the sheer weight of desire,

"-Merlin."


End file.
